Recognition for women scientists of the Enlightenment

Isabelle Lémonon-Waxin is the author of a doctoral dissertation entitled La Savante des Lumières françaises, histoire d’une persona : pratiques, représentations, espaces et réseaux. She is currently a research associate at the Centre François-Viète at Nantes Université and agreed to answer our questions.

Isabelle Lémonon: Two distinct paths emerge. The first was followed by girls raised in sufficiently wealthy noble or bourgeois families that sought to give their daughters more or less the same education as their sons. This category also includes women who had already had their children and whose husbands consented to their studying science, as well as widows.

The second path was that of "the daughter of," "the wife of," "the mistress of," or even "the cook of" or "the servant of"! A recurring pattern was the male scientist who enlisted one or more women in his immediate circle as a convenient workforce for tedious tasks, as was also the case with female computers and technicians (see the articles "Categorizing women in science in the 18^th century" and "Women enter the astronomical observatory"). The scientist in question trusted these women, who worked to build his reputation without posing the slightest risk of becoming his competitors.